VII
And how about letters? Has Pittsburgh a literature? Those rolling clouds of smoke, those mighty industries, those men of brawn, those men of energy, that ceaseless calculation of wages and dividends—can these produce an atmosphere for letters? It seems unthinkable. Yet hold! Only the other day on the train a man who has been a resident of New York for thirty-five years remarked in this author's presence that "Pittsburgh is the most intellectual city in America." He had never visited Pittsburgh and the author did not and does not know his name. "How about Boston?" asked another traveler. "Boston used to be, but is not now," he answered. Then I, in my timid and artless way, ventured to ask him why he spoke thus of Pittsburgh. "Because," said he, "distant as I am from Pittsburgh, more inspiration in artistic and intellectual things has come to me from that city than from any other place in America." But that may have been his dinner or the cigar.
Literature I once attempted to define as the written record of thought and action. If this be an adequate definition, then Pittsburgh writers have substantially enriched the field of literature in every department, and given our city permanent fame as a place of letters. As we begin our survey of the local field, the wonder grows that the literary production is so large, and that the character of much of it is so very high. Let Pegasus champ his golden bit as he may, and beat his hoof upon the empty air, Pittsburgh men and Pittsburgh women have ridden the classic steed with grace and skill through all the flowered deviations of his bridal paths. This is scarcely the place to attempt a critical estimate, and it would be an ungracious and a presumptuous task for me to appraise the literary value of that work with any great degree of detail. The occasion will hardly permit more than a list of names and titles; and while pains have been taken to make this list complete, it is possible that some books may have been overlooked, but truly by inadvertence only.
VIII
Perhaps the most important piece of literature from a local pen is Professor William M. Sloane's "Life of Napoleon." This is a painstaking and authoritative record of the great Frenchman who conquered everybody but himself. Dr. William J. Holland, once chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, now director of the Carnegie Museum, has given to the field of popular science "The Butterfly Book"—an author who knows every butterfly by its Christian name. Then Andrew Carnegie's "Triumphant Democracy" presents masses of statistics with such lightness of touch as to make them seem a stirring narrative. His other books, "An American Four-in-Hand in Britain" and "Round the World" present the vivid impressions of a keen traveler. His "Life of James Watt" conveys a sympathetic portraiture of the inventor of the steam engine. His "Gospel of Wealth" is a piece of deep-thinking discursiveness, although it really seems a superfluous thesis, for Mr. Carnegie's best exposition of the gospel of wealth unfolds itself in two thousand noble buildings erected all over the world for the diffusion of literature; in those splendid conceptions, the Scottish Education Fund; the Washington Carnegie Institution for Scientific Research; the Pension for College Professors, which has so much advanced the dignity and security of teaching; the Pension for Aged and Disabled Workmen; the Hero Fund, with its provision of aid to the injured and to the worthy poor; the many college endowments; and, greater than all, the Peace Palace at The Hague, through which he will make his appeal to the conscience of civilization during all time to organize and extend among the nations of the earth that system of arbitrated justice which has been already established within the borders of each State.
Carnegie Technical Schools (uncompleted)
But if I continue to group our Pittsburgh authors in this arbitrary fashion, those who come at the end will think I mean the last to be least. Therefore, let me pursue the theme indiscriminately, as I meant to do all along had not that same Pegasus, in spite of my defiance, run away at the very start.